The Opinion Pages|To the Editor: In ''Congress Won't Act. Will You?'' (Op-Ed, Nov. 11), Senator Bill Bradley argues that we need radical campaign finance reform for people to ''start taking their democracy back from the power of money.'' However, trying to more tightly control spending by those who contribute too much money to their causes and candidates will not fix what ails our government. America's central governance problem is that longstanding constitutional constraints limiting government power have been eroded, so that it has turned from protecting the property rights of its citizens to being a violator of those rights on behalf of political supporters.

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To the Editor: In ''Congress Won't Act. Will You?'' (Op-Ed, Nov. 11), Senator Bill Bradley argues that we need radical campaign finance reform for people to ''start taking their democracy back from the power of money.'' However, trying to more tightly control spending by those who contribute too much money to their causes and candidates will not fix what ails our government. America's central governance problem is that longstanding constitutional constraints limiting government power have been eroded, so that it has turned from protecting the property rights of its citizens to being a violator of those rights on behalf of political supporters.

For example, the Constitution grants Congress the power to levy ''uniform taxes'' to provide for the ''general welfare.'' In contrast, today's tax code is riddled with discriminatory taxes that burden particular subgroups of the population, and a large share of government expenditures benefit subgroups of the population at taxpayers' expense.

Similarly, the contracts and commerce clauses of the Constitution have been transformed from barriers against government intrusion to open invitations. In fact, the commerce clause has been termed ''the everything clause'' by one scholar, because it is used to justify any Federal restrictions in any area that might affect interstate commerce.

Apparent reform through restrictions on political contributions sounds good and polls well. However, it tries to address aspects of irresponsible government that are far from its core. Unless constitutional restrictions on government powers are taken more seriously, limits on campaign spending will do little to produce a more responsible government. In fact, this is the only reform ''radical'' enough, to use Senator Bradley's term, to substantially reduce government abuse.